Deputy fatally shot Black man while serving warrant

ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina deputy shot and killed a Black man while executing a search warrant Wednesday, authorities said, spurring an outcry from a crowd of dozens that immediately gathered at the scene and demanded law enforcement accountability.

The Pasquotank County Sheriff's deputy was placed on leave pending a review by the State Bureau of Investigation, Sheriff Tommy Wooten II said at a news conference. He said the deputy shot Andrew Brown Jr. about 8:30 a.m. while serving the warrant with the assistance of a nearby sheriff’s office in Elizabeth City, a municipality of about 18,000 people 170 miles northeast of Raleigh.

Wooten said he didn’t know Brown’s age, and he didn’t release the deputy's name. Local NAACP leader Keith Rivers said Brown was Black.

The deputy was wearing an active body camera at the time of the shooting, said Wooten, who declined to say how many shots the deputy fired or release any other details, citing a pending review by the State Bureau of Investigation. WAVY-TV reported that neighbors heard multiple shots.

Among the roughly 100 people who gathered at the scene of the shooting was Keith Rivers, president of the Pasquotank County chapter of the NAACP, who criticized the sheriff’s office for taking hours to release details.

“When is it going to stop? We just got a verdict yesterday,” Rivers said in a phone interview, referring to the guilty verdicts handed down Tuesday in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the fatal shooting of George Floyd.

Brown’s grandmother, Lydia Brown, and his aunt, Clarissa Brown Gibson, told The Associated Press that they learned about his death through a TV news report.